Min kamp 4 Quotes

“The music was linked with almost everything I had done, none of the records came without a memory. Everything that had happened in the last five years rose like steam from a cup when I played a record, not in the form of thoughts or reasoning, but as moods, openings, space. Some general, others specific. If my memories were stacked in a heap on the back of my life’s trailer, music was the rope that held them together and kept it, my life, in position.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“Oh, this is the song about the young man who loves a young woman. Has he the right to use such a word as “love”? He knows nothing about life, he knows nothing about her, he knows nothing about himself. All he knows is that he has never felt anything with such force and clarity before. Everything hurts, but nothing is as good. Oh, this is the song about being sixteen years old and sitting on a bus and thinking about her, the one, not knowing that feelings will slowly, slowly, weaken and fade, that life, that which is now so vast and so all-embracing, will inexorably dwindle and shrink until it is a manageable entity that doesn’t hurt so much, but nor is it as good.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 4

“Oh, this is the song about being sixteen years old and sitting on a bus and thinking about her, the one, not knowing that feelings will slowly, slowly, weaken and fade, that life, that which is now so vast and so all-embracing, will inexorably dwindle and shrink until it is a manageable entity which doesn’t hurt so much, but nor is it as good.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Dancing in the Dark

“Day in, day out! Wind and rain, sleet and snow, sun and storm, we did the same. We heard something on the grapevine, went there, came back, sat in his bedroom, heard something else, went by bus, bike, on foot, sat in someone’s bedroom. In the summer we went swimming. That was it. What was it all about? We were friends, there was no more than that. And the waiting, that was life.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Dancing in the Dark

“Kundera was also a postmodernist writer, but he completely lacked this embracing of other worlds, with him the world was always the same, it was Prague and Czechoslovakia and the Soviets who had either invaded or were on the point of doing so, and that was fine, but he kept withdrawing his characters from the plot, intervening and going on about something or other while the characters stood still, waiting as it were, by the window or wherever it was they happened to be until he had finished his explanation and they could move forward. Then you saw that the plot was only ‘a plot’ and that the characters were only ‘characters’, something he had invented, you knew they didn’t exist, and so why should you read about them? Kundera’s polar opposite was Hamsun, no one went as far into his characters’ world as he did, and that was what I preferred, at least in a comparison of these two, the physicality and the realism of Hunger, for example. There the world had weight, there even the thoughts were captured, while with Kundera the thoughts elevated themselves above the world and did as they liked with it. Another difference I had noticed was that European novels often had only one plot, everything followed one track as it were, while South American novels had a multiplicity of tracks and sidetracks, indeed, compared with European novels, they almost exploded with plots. One of my favourites was A Hundred Years of Solitude by García Márquez, but I also loved Love in the Time of Cholera. Kjærstad had a little of the same, but in a European way, and there was also something of Kundera in him. That was my opinion anyway.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“I had decided ages ago that I would not continue my education after school, what we learned was just rubbish, basically what life was about was living, and living in the way you want, in other words, enjoying your life. Some enjoyed their lives best by working, others by not working. OK, I was aware that I would need money, which meant that I would also have to work, but not all the time and not on something that would deplete all my energy and eat into my soul, leaving me like one of the middleaged halfwits who guarded their hedges and peered across at their neighbours to see if their status symbols were as wonderful as their own.
I didn’t want that.
But money was a problem.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with other I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.

When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carreid the promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.

But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“Everyone prioritizes. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don't. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“If dogs can smell fear, girls can smell nervousness, that was my experience. From”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Dancing in the Dark

“But what we were best at, what we were really the kings of, that was buses and sitting around in bedrooms. No one could beat us at that.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Dancing in the Dark

“There was something I couldn’t do and something I didn’t understand. There were secrets and there was darkness, there were shady dealings and there was laughter that jeered at everything. Oh, I sensed it, but I knew nothing about it. Nothing.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 4

“I hardly knew I had these thoughts, they lived in a kind of no-man’s-land, and when they came, in an explosion, I didn’t hold on to them, I let them fall back to where they’d come from, and so it was as though they didn’t exist. But what Jørn had said, that changed everything, because that came from the outside. Everything that came from the outside was dangerous.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book 4

“All the drinking reinforced my unease, and since nothing of what I did gave me anything back, I became more and more worn down, it was as though I was being drained, I became emptier and emptier, and soon I would be walking around like a shadow, a ghost, as empty and dark as the sky and the sea around me.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“Why didn't they drink? Why didn't everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person becomes attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgments are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“She did occasionally criticise my priorities, how could I buy three new LPs one Friday afternoon when I was walking around in shoes with the sole flapping off? They’re just material goods, I responded, objects, while music was completely different. This was the mind, for Christ’s sake. This is what we need, really, and I do mean really, and it’s important to prioritise it. Everyone prioritises. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don’t. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth. Do you understand?
‘Yes, you’re probably right, in a way. But isn’t it terribly impractical to walk around with your soles coming off? And it doesn’t look very nice, either, does it.’
‘What do you want me to do? I haven’t got any money. I prioritised music on this occasion.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“When I came to a halt by my front door I looked at my watch.
It had taken me fifteen minutes to walk around the whole village.
So it was within these fifteen minutes I was to live my whole life this coming year.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“The silence was not oppressive; it was open.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“All the books I liked were basically about the same topic. White Niggers by Ingvar Ambjørnsen, Beatles and Lead by Lars Saabye Christensen, Jack by Alf Lundell, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr., Novel with Cocaine by M. Agayev, Colossus by Finn Alnæs, Lasso Round the Moon by Agnar Mykle, The History of Bestiality trilogy by Jens Bjørneboe, Gentlemen by Klas Östergren, Icarus by Axel Jensen, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Humlehjertene by Ola Bauer and Post Office by Charles Bukowski.

Books about young men who struggled to fit into society, who wanted more from life than routines, more from life than a family, in short, young men who hated middle-class values and sought freedom. They travelled, they got drunk, they read and they dreamed about their life's Great Passion or writing the Great Novel.

Everything they wanted I wanted too.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“I would have loved to buy a hot dog from her, just to watch her squeezing the ketchup and mustard from the plastic bottles over the sausage,”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Dancing in the Dark

“Why would someone with such red cheeks who liked to go on long walks in the forest have such a big cock? I wondered. What would he do with it?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Dancing in the Dark

“We don’t live our lives alone, but that doesn’t mean we see those alongside whom we live our lives. When Dad moved to Northern Norway and was no longer physically in front of me with his body and his voice, his temper and his eyes, in a way he disappeared from my life, in the sense that he was reduced to a kind of discomfort I occasionally felt when he called or when something reminded me of him, then a kind of zone within me was activated, and in that zone lay all my feelings for him, but he was not there.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 4

“I was drunk in that pure joyful way you can be from white wine, when your thoughts collide with one another like bubbles and what emerges when they burst is pleasure.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 4

“Here he stands before me as he was, in midlife, and perhaps that is why reading them is so painful for me, he wasn’t only much more than my feelings for him but infinitely more, a complete and living person in the midst of his life.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book 4

“then she opened her eyes and pulled me back down and asked”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 4

“Discard her, find a new one, discard her. Rise and be ruthless, a seducer of women, a man they all wanted but none could have. I put the music magazines in a heap on the bottom of my bookshelves and went downstairs. Mom was sitting and talking on the telephone in the clothes room, the door was open, she smiled at me. I stood still for a few seconds to hear who she was talking to.

One of her sisters.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Min kamp 4

“era guapa de esa manera fría y rubia que me atraía tanto,”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Bailando en la oscuridad

“El cielo bajó, para quedarse como una tapadera sobre los tejados.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Bailando en la oscuridad

“Resulta más fácil escribir lo que hace la gente, pero creo que eso no basta. Por otra parte, eso es lo que”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Bailando en la oscuridad

“El silencio allí en lo alto, rebosante de belleza, me hizo verme a mí mismo, o ser consciente de mí mismo, no en relación con mi psicología o moral, no tenía nada que ver con mis cualidades, sino sólo con que yo existía allí, este cuerpo que se movía hacia arriba, yo estaba allí y en ese momento, y luego moriría.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Bailando en la oscuridad

“para acabar como esos tontos de mediana edad que cuidaban de sus setos y miraban hacia el vecino para ver si tenía más signos de opulencia que él.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Bailando en la oscuridad